Letters from the Issue of April 25, 2002

I went to Cuba in 1992 to visit relatives. I also met people there who would be considered dissidents. Over and over I heard from them that if the embargo were lifted, Castro would run out of excuses for the poor economic performance of his regime. If people living on the island, some of whom had been to jail for their beliefs, were telling me it should be lifted, that was good enough for me. They understood the situation much better than we did in Miami because they were living it. This caused me to begin opposing the embargo.

In addition many of them back then said they stopped listening to Radio Martí because of its lack of objectivity. They are experts at listening to propaganda and so they know it when they hear it.

The biggest irony is that people like Salvador Lew, director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and Radio Mambí general manager Armando Perez-Roura are cut from the same cloth as Castro. The perfect example to illustrate this is the manner in which they react to contrary opinions. Castro claims that those who don't share his ideas are counterrevolutionaries and CIA agents. In Miami anyone who doesn't conform to the hard line is labeled a Castro agent.

Alvaro Mora

Coral Gables

Editor's note: A reporting error in "Incessant Static" resulted in an inaccurate description of Lazaro Asencio's personal history. Asencio, who is Radio Martí's news director, was not a commander in Fidel Castro's rebel army; he was a commander in the anti-Batista rebel group led by Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, who now heads the exile group Cambio Cubano. Asencio does claim to have once been an intimate friend of Castro.